IELTS Listening- Set Questions

IELTS Listening set each other questions

Group A

Work together to make IELTS Listening-style questions for the test recording(s) your teacher gives you. You will then test the other group with your questions and they will do the same to you with different listening texts.

Rules:

1. You can use your dictionaries and ask your teacher to help you while you are creating the questions and you can replay sections as many times as you like, but you can’t look at the tapescripts.
2. Write ten questions per complete listening text
3. The questions must be in the same order as the text
4. You can’t use the same type of task more than once, meaning you must change task-type after all breaks in the recording
5. Although the other group might be able to guess something about the answer before listening, they shouldn’t have more than a 10% chance of getting the actual answer just by guessing
6. You must use task types and tricks from the lists below. Please tick off the ones that you use.

 

Task types that your group can use:

1. Forms to fill in with no more than two words and/ or a number in the gap
2. Gapped sentences with no more than 3 words and/ or a number in the gap
3. Completing a summary of what is said with one word or number for each gap
4. Selecting three out of six things, e.g. topics talked about or opinions
5. Short answer questions
6. Completing a flow chart

 

PTO for ways of tricking and helping the other group

Tricks you can use to make the questions more difficult

Please use at least three and tick the ones you use

Spelling and punctuation

1. Asking them to write words with consonant combinations whose spelling and pronunciation are difficult to guess and remember, e.g. “photo” and “chorus”
2. Words with double letters, e.g. -ed forms and -er forms
3. Compound nouns which must be spelt as one word
4. Asking them to write numbers or words which are said with “double”
5. Asking them to write words which need capital letters

Grammar

6. Questions where the preposition must be correct to get a point

Spotting the correct information

7. Gapped sentences that use different words from the text (even though the word or words in the gap are the same as the text)
8. Needing to spot that someone changes their mind
9. Varied amounts of time between the answers to the questions, e.g. two answers quite close together and then a long time before the next answer

Numbers

10. Asking them to write amounts of money
11. Asking them to write large numbers

Fitting in the gap

12. Answers which would be longer than the maximum number of words if they didn’t use note form (= cut out some of the grammatical words)
13. Questions in which they need to write the plural for their answer to be correct

Pronunciation

14. Questions where unstressed words must be written

Misc

15. Changing task during a single listening text

 

Ways you can help the other group:

Fitting in the gap

1. Gapfill questions where several words that mean the same thing are all possible answers (e.g. “one” and “a”)
2. Questions where the determiners (e.g. “these” and “any”) are optional in the answers

Spotting the right information

3. Questions about things which are said twice in the text (usually in different ways)
4. Questions where the other options can all be crossed off because of what people say

Anticipating the answer

5. Words which are spelt out but are almost possible to guess the spelling of

Spelling

6. Questions in which both an abbreviation and full words (e.g. “etc” and “etcetera”) are okay in the answer
7. Capital letters which are obvious, e.g. days of the week and personal names
8. Spellings you can guess even if you’ve never heard them before

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Group B

Work together to make IELTS Listening-style questions for the test recording(s) your teacher gives you. You will then test the other group with your questions and they will do the same to you with different listening texts.

Rules:

1. You can use your dictionaries and ask your teacher to help you while you are creating the questions and you can replay sections as many times as you like, but you can’t look at the tapescripts.
2. Write ten questions per complete listening text
3. The questions must be in the same order as the text
4. You can’t use the same type of task more than once, meaning you must change task-type after all breaks in the recording
5. Although the other group might be able to guess something about the answer before listening, they shouldn’t have more than a 10% chance of getting the actual answer just by guessing
6. You must use task types and tricks from the lists below. Please tick off the ones that you use.

 

Task types that your group can use:

1. Tables to fill in with no more than two words and/ or a number in the gap
2. Gaps for one word only
3. Matching, e.g. matching the different people with what they say
4. Labelling a diagram
5. Multiple choice with three options for each question

 

PTO for ways of tricking and helping the other group

 

Tricks you can use to make the questions more difficult (please use at least three and tick the ones you use):

Spelling and punctuation

1. Asking them to write words which have silent letters
2. Compound nouns which must be spelt as two words with a gap
3. Compound nouns which must be spelt as two words with a hyphen
4. Asking them to write irregular plurals and/ or verbs
5. Asking them to write words which even native speakers find it difficult to spell, e.g. “definitely”

Spotting the correct information

6. Needing to select the right answer from several things that are all mentioned
7. A long time before the answer to the first question

Numbers

8. Asking them to write times and/ or dates
9. Testing comprehension of numbers which are pronounced in difficult ways in the text, e.g. “half a million”, “ten to two” and “nought point five”

Fitting in the gap

10. Gaps where it is difficult to choose the right length of answer
11. Questions where the correct determiner (e.g. “some”, “three”, “a”, “the”) must be included

Pronunciation

12. Grammatical endings which are difficult to hear, e.g. “-ed” when it sounds like “t”, or “s” in “-ts”

Misc

13. Both a number and a word or words needed in one gap

 

Ways you can help the other group:

Fitting in the gap

1. Questions where a singular or plural noun would both be okay
2. Grammatical endings which you can guess from the gap even if you don’t hear them, e.g. third person -s in a verb after “he”

Spotting the right information

3. Questions about things which are easy to spot because the speaker announces what they are going to talk about, e.g. by introducing the next topic of their presentation

Anticipating the answer

4. Numbers which they can half guess from your real-life knowledge, e.g. prices

Spelling

5. Answers which have different British and American spelling (easier because British and American are both are okay in the exam)
6. Questions in which both a symbol and a word (e.g. “$” and “dollars”) are both okay in the answer
7. Collocations made of words which students are likely to be familiar with even if they’ve never heard that combination before

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Worksheet 2 – Trying the other group’s tasks and discussion (for both groups)

Swap rooms or recordings and listen to the other text(s) once only. After you have finished you can check your answers with the tapescript.

Still in the same groups, try to guess what tricks the other group chose to make the questions more difficult for you and what things they chose to do to help you (from a different list of tricks and help).

Look at the list of tricks and help that the other group had and try to guess which ones they chose.

Come together as a class and check which tricks and help the other group used when they were writing the questions you had to answer.

Discussion

• What can you do to not fall into the traps set by the examiners?
• How can you make sure you take advantage of the help that examiners give you?
• Is there any language which is particularly useful to study for the Listening test? How can you learn that language?
• How can you learn to understand different native speaker accents?
• How can you learn to cope with the four different kinds of listening texts (conversation dealing with everyday arrangements, monologue on everyday practical matters, conversation about academic matters, and lecture)?
• How can you prepare for the IELTS Listening test outside the classroom?